(237g) Teaching and Learning Strategy of Aspenone during COVID-19 Pandemic to Chemical Engineering Sophomores

The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has drastically and negatively influenced students learning since mid-Spring 2020 and therefore, it gave rise to a sudden shift to the online education delivery system from the conventional in-person teaching method. Even though students moved to several virtual platforms during the pandemic, it was a serious challenge to provide hands-on training to teach and train various laboratory skills. In a dry laboratory setting, the students are often facilitated with many modern and complicated devices to conduct various computational or applied mathematical analysis. The process simulation courses have become an extensive and essential tool in chemical engineering and is becoming an important part of the chemical engineering curriculum. In addition, the process simulation and computational expertise facilitate an association of research and teaching. Nevertheless, during the pandemic period, the virtual learning mode often prevents exposure to such hands-on training facilities for teaching such process simulation courses. In this article, we have discussed an online delivery mechanism to teach two AspenONE software i.e., Aspen Plus and Aspen Hysys, for CHE 2033: Introduction to Chemical Process Engineering course, which is offered to sophomores in the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University (OSU), Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. In addition, we discussed the experience of teaching blended online delivery mechanisms (synchronous and asynchronous) of process simulators. We believe that the experiences learned during the COVID-19 pandemic will benefit in developing novel rules, regulations, learning platforms and potential solutions for upcoming unavoidable circumstances that adversely affect the established instructional mechanisms.